Campaign for more women in film and TV gets major boost from Screen Australia

The push for more screen stories by, for and about women has received a major boost, with Screen Australia announcing new funds and programs designed to encourage greater female representation in front of and behind the camera.

Launched on Monday, the suite of programs will immediately inject $3 million into the search for new female-skewing projects and companies. A further $2 million will be dedicated to career development and business support over the following two years.

Sue Maslin, producer of The Dressmaker, who struggled to convince male financiers there was an audience for her film.Credit:Luis Ascui

To qualify for funding, a project – for cinema, television or the digital realm – will need to have at least three of the following:

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female director

female writer

female protagonist

female producer

Screen Australia boss Graeme Mason said this "three-tick test" was not a quota system.

Whatever its virtues or failings, Fifty Shades of Grey, starring Dakota Johnson, has helped convince the doubters of the power of the female audience.Credit:Universal

"I don't believe in the idea of quotas," he says. "I just don't think they work for the people you're doing them for.

"What we're trying to do is make sure the stories [by, for and about women] get told, because creatively, culturally and commercially that makes sense. You've still got a lot of white gentlemen of a certain age dominating the industry. We're not criticising the work they're doing, but we think it could do with a bit of a shake-up."

The UK has a similar three-tick program, while Sweden has a 50 per cent quota for government-backed films. In Hollywood, where government funding is largely non-existent, actors such as Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Poehler have led the way in calling for greater representation of women on and off screen.

Underpinning the local push, in which veteran filmmaker Gillian Armstrong has been a prominent voice, is the statistical evidence that shows that while 48 per cent of graduates from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School in screenwriting, production and directing between 1973 and 2015 were women, far fewer of them are actually getting their work on screen.

Sue Maslin, the producer of The Dressmaker, which has taken more than $15 million at the local box office, knows how hard it can be to get past the gender bias in the industry.

"When I talked to people about raising finance for this very female-skewing movie, the almost-exclusively male sales agents just weren't interested unless I had A-list males attached," she said. "Even with Kate Winslet and Judy Davis, two of the finest actresses alive, they just thought it was too risky."

Like Mason, Maslin doesn't think quotas are the way to fix the problem.

"I think they have the capacity to divide the industry at the very time we need to bring it together," shesaid. "I think the carrot is a far better incentive than the stick."

Maslin is convinced there's lots of money to be made by making films by, for and about women, as has been amply demonstrated by the likes of Bridesmaids, Fifty Shades of Gray, Trainwreck and, now The Dressmaker.

"We've known about this problem for 30 years and nothing has changed," Maslin said. "What will make a difference is people waking up to the fact that there's a strong business case in favour of change."